Related papers: Probing physics students' conceptual knowledge str…
Developing expertise in physics requires appropriate integration and assimilation of physics and mathematics. Instructors and students often describe physics courses in terms of their emphasis on conceptual and quantitative problem-solving.…
Understanding how physicists solve problems can guide the development of methods that help students learn and improve at solving complex problems. Leveraging the framework of cognitive task analysis, we conducted semi-structured interviews…
The cyclic format of the undergraduate physics curriculum depends on students' ability to recall and utilize material covered in prior courses in order to reliably build on that knowledge in later courses. However, there is evidence to…
Many Physics Education Researchers have discussed the positive correlation between students' incoming mathematics skills and performance in their physics classes. Thus, in order to strengthen their performance gains in their physics…
This study investigated the use of concept maps on advancing students conceptual understanding of the Euler Circuit concept. The participants were students at the college of Humanities and Social Sciences with a background in Art. A…
While proof is a central component of postsecondary mathematical study, proof construction has historically posed significant difficulties for students who intend to earn mathematics degrees at the undergraduate level. This work is…
This paper reports on an investigation into the correlations between students' understandings of introductory astronomy concepts and the correctness and coherency of their written responses to targeted Lecture-Tutorial questions. We…
In this paper we investigate the extent to which students' problem-solving behaviors change as a result of working on multi-faceted, context-rich problems. During the semester, groups of two to three students work on several problems that…
Mathematics is the language of science. Fluent and productive use of mathematics requires one to understand the meaning embodied in mathematical symbols, operators, syntax, etc., which can be a difficult task. For instance, in algebraic…
The traditional approach to studying student understanding presents a question and uses the student answers to make inferences about their knowledge. However, this method does not capture the range of possible alternative ideas available to…
Human knowledge provides a formal understanding of the world. Knowledge graphs that represent structural relations between entities have become an increasingly popular research direction towards cognition and human-level intelligence. In…
Statistical thinking partially depends upon an iterative process by which essential features of a problem setting are identified and mapped onto an abstract model or archetype, and then translated back into the context of the original…
Concept discovery is one of the open problems in the interpretability literature that is important for bridging the gap between non-deep learning experts and model end-users. Among current formulations, concepts defines them by as a…
Testing knowledge is an integral part of summative assessment at schools. It can be performed in many different ways. In this study we propose assessment of physics knowledge by using a tournament approach. Prior to a statistical analysis…
One of the objectives of the undergraduate physics curriculum is for students to become aware of the connections between the fundamental principles of classical physics and their personal experience. Nonetheless, numerous studies have shown…
Instruction in quantum mechanics is becoming increasingly important as the field is not only a key part of modern physics research, but is also important for emerging technologies. However, many students regard quantum mechanics as a…
Scientists who study how the brain solves problems have recently verified that, because of stringent limitations in working memory, where the brain solves problems, students must apply facts and algorithms that have previously been well…
Studies indicate that pre-existing misconceptions negatively impact the effectiveness of traditional physics education. Research has also shown that activity based instruction improves posttest scores on conceptual evaluations. However, the…
We present a novel methodology to jointly perform multi-task learning and infer intrinsic relationship among tasks by an interpretable and sparse graph. Unlike existing multi-task learning methodologies, the graph structure is not assumed…
In physics education research, instructors and researchers often use research-based assessments (RBAs) to assess students' skills and knowledge. In this paper, we support the development of a mechanics cognitive diagnostic to test and…